Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris: Beauty and Kindness

"This is your lucky day!" says the title character in Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, and she makes it so for others. Her kindness comes back around for her, too.

Leslie Manville stars in the new film directed by Anthony Fabian (sharing writing credits with Carroll Cartwright, Keith Thompson, and Olivia Hetreed) from the novel by Paul Gallico.

My friend Susan was struck by the convergence in Mrs. Harris of both kindness and a love of beauty. Ada Harris is a war widow in late-1950s London who cleans homes to make her modest living. A gorgeous Dior gown in one lady's wardrobe gives Mrs. Harris a new goal in life, to buy a "frock" for herself from the house of Dior in Paris. Through luck and pluck, she gets to Paris.

But Paris reeks of trash from a sanitation workers' strike, while Dior's high-end customers fail to pay their high-end bills. Here, too, Mrs. Harris cleans up others' messes through empathy and her courage to stand up herself and for others who are treated unfairly.

Among the characters she helps are Dior's young financial officer Fauvel (Lucas Bravo) and one of Dior's models Natasha (Alba Baptista). While they team up to assist her, she tries to nudge them into relationship. But the real matchmaker is Jean-Paul Sartre: the two beautiful young people bond over the philosopher's Being and Nothingness.

Not being seen as you really are is a theme in Sartre that emerges naturally from a story about high fashion. Judged by her modest appearance, Mrs. Harris is at first excluded by Dior's assistant Claudine Colbert (Isabelle Huppert). Others in the story who have the accoutrements of class are crass cheapskates. One character who calls Mrs. Harris "nobody" admits her true self is "invisible". Even a film in which the character Natasha appears is called Invisible Amour.

The apotheosis of that theme is the man who tells Mrs. Harris that her beauty is something in her, not what she wears.

This gentle comedy is scored by Rael Jones with sensitivity and a nod to the use of strings in the pop music of the 1950s. The main theme is a wistful waltz. Jones meets the challenge presented by a fashion show, where each model projects a different image, building to the dress that tops them all.

When you see the film, well, that's your lucky day.